Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

Brain's 'sweet spot' for love found in neurological patient

Date:

February 14, 2014

Source:

University of Chicago

Summary:

A region deep inside the brain controls how quickly people make decisions about love, according to new research. The finding, made in an examination of a 48-year-old man who suffered a stroke, provides the first causal clinical evidence that an area of the brain called the anterior insula "plays an instrumental role in love," said neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo, lead author of the study.

Share This

These fMRI scans show brain regions activated by sexual desire (in blue) compared to love (in pink) in healthy patients. The overlap in red illustrates how a patient’s brain lesion affected the area in the brain associated with decision-making in love.

Related Articles

The finding, made in an examination of a 48-year-old man who suffered a stroke, provides the first causal clinical evidence that an area of the brain called the anterior insula "plays an instrumental role in love," said UChicago neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo, lead author of the study.

In an earlier paper that analyzed research on the topic, Cacioppo and colleagues defined love as "an intentional state for intense [and long-term] longing for union with another" while lust, or sexual desire, is characterized by an intentional state for a short-term, pleasurable goal.

In this study, the patient made decisions normally about lust but showed slower reaction times when making decisions about love, in contrast to neurologically typical participants matched on age, gender and ethnicity. The findings are presented in a paper, "Selective Decision-Making Deficit in Love Following Damage to the Anterior Insula," published in the journal Current Trends in Neurology.

"This distinction has been interpreted to mean that desire is a relatively concrete representation of sensory experiences, while love is a more abstract representation of those experiences," said Cacioppo, a research associate and assistant professor in psychology. The new data suggest that the posterior insula, which affects sensation and motor control, is implicated in feelings of lust or desire, while the anterior insula has a role in the more abstract representations involved in love.

In the earlier paper, "The Common Neural Bases Between Sexual Desire and Love: A Multilevel Kernel Density fMRI Analysis," Cacioppo and colleagues examined a number of studies of brain scans that looked at differences between love and lust.

The studies showed consistently that the anterior insula was associated with love, and the posterior insula was associated with lust. However, as in all fMRI studies, the findings were correlational.

"We reasoned that if the anterior insula was the origin of the love response, we would find evidence for that in brain scans of someone whose anterior insula was damaged," she said.

In the study, researchers examined a 48-year-old heterosexual male in Argentina, who had suffered a stroke that damaged the function of his anterior insula. He was matched with a control group of seven Argentinian heterosexual men of the same age who had healthy anterior insula.

The patient and the control group were shown 40 photographs at random of attractive, young women dressed in appealing, short and long dresses and asked whether these women were objects of sexual desire or love. The patient with the damaged anterior insula showed a much slower response when asked if the women in the photos could be objects of love.

"The current work makes it possible to disentangle love from other biological drives," the authors wrote. Such studies also could help researchers examine feelings of love by studying neurological activity rather than subjective questionnaires.

University of Chicago. "Brain's 'sweet spot' for love found in neurological patient." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 February 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140214092006.htm>.

University of Chicago. (2014, February 14). Brain's 'sweet spot' for love found in neurological patient. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140214092006.htm

University of Chicago. "Brain's 'sweet spot' for love found in neurological patient." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140214092006.htm (accessed March 3, 2015).

More From ScienceDaily

More Mind & Brain News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015 — Why do people shake hands? A new study suggests one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other's odors. Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — It appears that stress markers in unemployed people can be found, independent of smoking, alcohol consumption and overweight/obesity. Results from a study suggest that long-term unemployment may be ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Doctors write millions of prescriptions a year for drugs to calm the behavior of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. But non-drug approaches actually work better, and carry ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Briefly counseling college students on the dangers of binge drinking is effective in lowering heavy drinking levels among many students, but only temporarily. Three out of four will be right back ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Loneliness brought about by the death of a spouse can trigger a wider network of depression-like symptoms, a study has found, but authors suggest that doctors are often too quick to attribute these ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Family Based Interpersonal Psychotherapy (FB-IPT) is more effective in treating preadolescent children with depression compared to child-centered therapy (CCT), a recent study has found. ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Everyone worries about losing their memory as they grow older—memory loss remains one of the most common complaints of the elderly. But the molecular reasons behind the processes remain unclear, ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — A strong link has been made between subthreshold manic episodes and likelihood of developing bipolar disorder in children of parents with bipolar disorder. The study’s findings could improve ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — A newly published study is the first to report an association between bisphenol-A (BPA), a common plasticizer used in a variety of consumer food and beverage containers, with autism spectrum disorder ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — On Feb. 26, a picture of a cocktail dress originally uploaded to the blog Tumblr swept the Internet and managed to divide the population over a simple question: What color is the dress? Some viewers ... full story

Related Stories

July 17, 2014 — A new study suggests the difference between love and lust might be in the eyes. Specifically, where your date looks at you could indicate whether love or lust is in the cards. The new study found ... full story

June 20, 2012 — Thanks to modern science, we know that love lives in the brain, not in the heart. But where in the brain is it – and is it in the same place as sexual desire? A recent international study is the ... full story

Aug. 17, 2011 — The importance of friendship in romantic love and the time it takes to perceive falling in love are two key differences in how residents in the US, Lithuania and Russia see romantic love, according ... full story

Oct. 22, 2010 — Falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second. The findings ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.